Reflectors having a configured surface configuration are known in the art. For example, European Patent Publication EP 0,920,076 discloses an antenna system with a reflector having a configured surface, whereby two beams or two bundles of rays emanating from two separate radiators are focused onto two different regions.
European Patent Publication EP 0,915,529 discloses a possibility for forming a single beam which is directed onto a region to be illuminated and which is formed with the aid of a reflector having a configured surface for collecting several beams emanating from several radiators which are connected together through a suitable distribution network.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,298,877 describes a reflector having a configured surface for focusing two beams onto two different receivers or rather receiver antennas of a satellite.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,684,494 discloses the focusing of separate beams having different polarities by means of a reflector arrangement comprising two reflectors. Each of the reflectors is constructed as a grid reflector so that it is effective only for one of the polarizations.
Conventional reflectors are of limited use for applications in which a bi-directional beam transmission (transmitting and receiving) is required with an effective decoupling of the transmitting direction from the receiving direction toward and from a single common region to be illuminated. The usefulness of conventional reflectors for the just mentioned purposes is rather limited especially if it shall be possible to use the same frequency and/or the same polarizations for the transmitting direction and the receiving direction. Thus, conventional reflectors have been subject to the following problems. In the case of a simple construction of the system using a single radiator for transmission and reception, there is an insufficient decoupling between the transmission direction and the reception direction of the electromagnetic radiation. Such decoupling must be achieved by additional structural components in the system such as diplexer circuits for separate transmission and receiving frequencies as is customary in conventional communication technology. When the transmission and reception frequency are the same, circulators must be used as is customary in radar technology. Producing or processing the electromagnetic radiation by these additional circuit components is costly.
In those conventional systems in which a decoupling of transmission and reception frequencies is to be accomplished, several radiators are required also resulting in costly structures as is the case for example in U.S. Pat. No. 5,684,494. However, the use of separate reflectors limits the number of useable polarization directions because different polarization directions must be provided for the transmission direction and for the reception direction. Thus, the data volume that can be transmitted through conventional systems is markedly limited.